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This is the second post in our two-part series about DOJ’s revised guidance on its “Best Practices for Victim Response and Reporting Cyber Incidents.” In the first installment, we looked at DOJ’s recommendations for preparedness. Today, we turn to the basics of data breach incident response and a list of DOJ’s “don’ts” when dealing with a hacker.

The U.S. Department of Justice is increasing its outreach to the private sector on all things cyber.

Last week, the DOJ’s Criminal Division held a cybersecurity roundtable to discuss challenges in handling data breach investigations. As part of the roundtable discussion, the DOJ issued revised guidance on its “Best Practices for Victim Response and Reporting Cyber Incidents.” The Best Practices guidance, summarized below, is the result of the DOJ’s outreach efforts concerning ways in which the government can work more effectively with the private sector to address cybersecurity challenges. The goal of the roundtable discussion, which started in 2015, is to foster and enhance cooperation between law enforcement and data breach victims, and to also encourage information sharing.

A federal appeals court is giving Google and the Justice Department more time to work out their differences in a standoff over whether the tech giant must hand over customer emails stored outside of the United States.

Last week, MGM Resorts International filed nine pre-emptive lawsuits against the victims of last year’s mass shooting at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. MGM, owner of the Mandalay, is asking federal courts around the country to declare that the company is not liable “for any claim for injuries arising out of or related to” the mass attack.

In one of the first major tests of the Illinois biometric data privacy law, Facebook is headed to trial this summer over allegations that the social media giant unlawfully collects user data with its photo tagging function. Last week, U.S. District Judge James Donato denied cross motions for summary judgment in a class action pending in Northern California, noting the “multitude of fact disputes in the case.”

Professional athletes, teams, and leagues have embraced wearable technology. But as this new technology becomes ubiquitous, a new category of valuable—and personally sensitive—data has emerged, raising novel data security issues and incentives for would-be hackers.

The LabMD data security case is anything but dull. An 8-year (and counting) fight with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, a U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into allegations of government overreach and collusion, a key witness granted governmental immunity and multiple related civil lawsuits scattered around the country.

Yesterday, we reported that the Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to remand its dispute with Microsoft Corp. concerning access to customer emails stored abroad to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with instructions to dismiss it as moot. The government argued that the newly enacted “CLOUD” Act clarifies prior law and makes clear that information stored abroad can, under certain circumstances, be subject to a domestic warrant. The government added that it obtained a new warrant for Microsoft to turn over the requested information in the days following the CLOUD Act’s passage.

We’ve written several times about the landmark dispute between the U.S. government and Microsoft Corp. over access to a customer’s emails stored in Ireland. Now, a month after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument on the government’s appeal, the Justice Department has asked the Court to remand the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with instructions to dismiss it as moot.

On its face, last week’s report that the number of data breaches reported last year to New York’s Attorney General spiked to an all-time high of 1,583 – up 23 percent from 2016 – was not good news.

But behind the numbers are even more disturbing trends. Start with the fact that hacking – the handy work of outside intruders – was the leading cause of reported breaches last year, accounting for 44 percent of reported breaches. Hacking also accounted for nearly 95 percent of all personal information exposed. In second place was employee error or negligence, which represented 25 percent of last year’s reported breaches.

Last week, a federal district judge in California shot down Facebook, Inc.’s second attempt to dismiss a putative class action alleging that its facial recognition software violates the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (BIPA). The court found that plaintiffs had standing to proceed under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robbins because the alleged BIPA violation was sufficient to give rise to a “concrete injury” for purposes of bringing suit.

On February 27, 2018, TheNew York Times featured an op-ed written by Craig A. Newman, Chair of Patterson Belknap’s Privacy and Data Security Practice, entitled “Can the United States Search Data Overseas?” Mr. Newman discusses the critical question in United States v Microsoft, which is pending before the Supreme Court: should the U.S. law enforcement have access to emails stored outside the country? He argues that the fundamental problem of storing data across borders will not be solved by this case, and that legislative action is necessary to properly govern “the vast stores of electronic data that move seamlessly across international borders.”

On Tuesday, a Senate subcommittee grilled Uber’s Chief Information Security Officer, John Flynn, over a 2016 data breach that affected nearly 57 million drivers and riders. At the hearing, Uber faced backlash from lawmakers for its “morally wrong and legally reprehensible” conduct that “violated not only the law but the norm of what should be expected.”

A recent federal appellate ruling delivered a significant blow to invasion of privacy claims based on facial recognition technology used to scan users’ faces that are then put on their personalized players “in-game,” allowing them to play side-by-side with basketball stars in a popular video game.

A federal judge in California has agreed to hold Google in contempt for not following his order to turn over data stored overseas. The order is largely symbolic, however, since a contempt order is required for Google to appeal the ruling.

The Supreme Court is poised to finally answer the question that’s been plaguing federal courts across the country: must U.S. tech companies comply with warrants issued under the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) that demand information from customer accounts that is stored on servers in a foreign country?

The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (“CFAA”) has generated controversy and disagreement among courts and commentators regarding the scope of its application. The statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, which provides for both criminal and civil penalties, prohibits accessing a computer or protected computer “without authorization” or in a manner “exceeding authorized access.” Courts are divided as to the meaning of these phrases, yet the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined the opportunity to resolve the circuit split that has developed, leaving the exact scope of this important statute in question.

The ongoing dispute between the government and Google concerning the company’s refusal to hand over customer data stored on foreign servers has taken an odd twist. Now, the Justice Department is demanding that Google be sanctioned for not abiding by the court’s most recent decision—ordering it to produce data associated with 22 email accounts—and calling Google’s conduct “a willful and contemptuous disregard of various court orders.” The case is In the Matter of the Search of Content that Is Stored at Premises Controlled by Google, No. 16-mc-80263 (N.D. Cal.).

Equifax Inc.’s interim CEO, Paulino do Rego Barros Jr., issued the company’s second public apology this morning for the massive data breach that has affected as many as 143 million U.S. consumers.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Barros acknowledged the company’s ball drop in handling the breach and promised to “act quickly and forcefully to correct our mistakes.” He said the company will introduce a new service that would permit consumers to control access to their personal credit data.

Another federal judge has rejected the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s interpretation of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), and has ordered Google to hand over customer email traffic—wherever located—to U.S. law enforcement. More than a year ago, the Second Circuit held that Microsoft Corp. was not required to produce customer emails stored on foreign servers in response to an SCA warrant. Since then, the Second Circuit’s ruling has been rejected by three different federal courts around the country.

A federal appeals court earlier this week dealt a blow to healthcare insurer CareFirst, Inc., concluding that a group of customers have the right to pursue a class action data breach lawsuit based on a 2014 cyberattack.

Over the past several years, we have witnessed a fundamental shift in orchestrated cyber-attacks from hacking credit card data and healthcare information to targeting businesses, their operations and bottom lines.

Lawyers for the tech community are gearing up for argument next month in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, seeking to overturn another magistrate’s order that requires digital information stored outside of the U.S. to be turned over in response to a U.S. search warrant.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – often criticized for not providing clear guidance as to what the agency considers reasonable data security – announced on Friday that it would publish a weekly blog discussing “lessons learned” from data security investigations that were closed without a formal enforcement action.

In the aftermath of two powerful global ransomware attacks, a Michigan-based medical equipment provider has disclosed that hackers “encrypted our data files” and accessed more than 500,000 patient records in what is believed to be the largest reported ransomware attack on health care information.

In a consequential test of the Federal Trade Commission’s authority as a data security regulator, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit will hear argument tomorrow in a case that will determine whether the agency must show a concrete consumer injury as an element of an enforcement action, just as private plaintiffs have been required to do for years.

Justice Shirley Kornreich recently issued one of the few New York state court decisions that address the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). Spec Simple, Inc. v. Designer Pages Online LLC, No. 651860/2015, 2017 BL 160865 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. May 10, 2017). The CFAA criminalizes both accessing a computer without authorization and exceeding authorized access and thereby obtaining information from any protected computer. Id. at *3 (citing 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C)). The CFAA also provides a civil cause of action to any person who suffers damage or loss because of a violation of the CFAA. Id. at *4 (citing 18 U.S.C. § 1030(g)). As discussed below, the decision provides a helpful look into the interpretation of CFAA claims in the future.

We previously posted about a case before the New York Court of Appeals that concerned whether Facebook has the legal standing to challenge search warrants seeking its users’ data. In April, the court sided with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and rejected Facebook’s challenge. The three opinions by the judges—particularly the concurrence by Judge Jenny Rivera—provide insight into this evolving area of law.

The technology community took aim at a recent federal magistrate’s ruling that ordered Google Inc. to comply with search warrants seeking customer emails stored on servers abroad, calling the decision “an impermissible extraterritorial application of U.S. law.” In rejecting a recent federal appeals court decision in a similar case in favor of Microsoft Corp., U.S. Magistrate Thomas J. Reuter in Philadelphia ruled that transferring emails from a foreign server to the U.S. was not tantamount to a seizure beyond American borders. The technology companies urged the court to reject the “fiction that such a foreign search and seizure is a domestic act….”

Facebook is the latest social media giant to push back on law enforcement efforts to seek user information. On Tuesday, the New York Court of Appeals heard oral argument in a case focusing on whether Facebook has the right—or legal standing—to challenge bulk search warrants issued by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office for its users' data. The case is In re 381 Search Warrants Directed to Facebook, Inc. and Dated July 23, 2013.

On January 23, 2017, President Donald Trump named Ajit Pai as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In his previous role as the senior Republican on the FCC under President Barack Obama, Mr. Pai was an outspoken critic of the agency’s decision to assert jurisdiction over Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) and its rules governing broadband privacy. Pai’s appointment suggests that significant changes may be on the horizon.

Back in December 2013, a U.S. magistrate issued a seemingly routine warrant in a narcotics case demanding that Microsoft turn over messages from a customer’s email account that resided on a server in Ireland. That warrant, which issued under a 1986 law called the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”), 18 U.S.C. § 2703, is still being debated today.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly looking into whether two data breaches at Yahoo!, Inc. should have been disclosed earlier. In a front page article today, the Wall Street Journalreported that “people familiar with the matter” say the SEC is investigating whether Yahoo!’s disclosures complied with the securities laws.

In a recent update to its widely used application, Uber has implemented a change in location settings that some users are not happy about. Before the update, users could limit Uber’s ability to track their location to “only while using app.” But the new update strips users of that option.

On Wednesday, Yahoo! disclosed that more than 1 billion of its users’ personal information was exposed in a newly discovered cyber-attack, making it the largest data breach reported to date. The breach apparently took place in August of 2013.

The transition of power from President Barack Obama to President-Elect Donald Trump is underway. Although President-Elect Trump did not lay out specific policy prescriptions about data privacy or consumer protection during his candidacy, his recent choice of Dr. Joshua D. Wright to lead transition efforts at the Federal Trade Commission provides some hints as to the direction the agency may take under a Trump administration.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) and the American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) have weighed in on Facebook’s high-profile dispute with a social media aggregation company over whether it had unlawfully accessed Facebook’s computers. The EFF and ACLU warned the Ninth Circuit that the panel’s ruling for Facebook risks chilling important investigations and makes “potential criminals out of millions of ordinary Americans on the basis of innocuous online behavior.” The case is Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc., No. 13-17102.

We’re writing this week to highlight some of the ways in which President Obama’s evolving views on cybersecurity can help guide corporate governance on this increasingly important subject. In an interview with Wired Magazine, the President admitted that he is rethinking his own view on cybercrime: comparing it to a “pandemic” no longer addressed by traditional means such as the latest and greatest defensive technologies

As New York public schools increase the use of technology in day-to-day operations and in the classroom, they increasingly face data management and data security threats similar to those faced by businesses and non-profit institutions.

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DataSecurityLaw.com is the firm’s resource for the latest news, analysis, and thought leadership in the critical area of privacy and cybersecurity law. Patterson Belknap’s Privacy and Data Security practice provides public and private enterprises, their leadership teams and boards with comprehensive services in this critical area. Our team of experienced litigators, corporate advisors and former federal and state prosecutors advises on a broad range of privacy and data protection matters including cyber preparedness and compliance, data breach response, special board and committee representation, internal investigations, and litigation.